Lolita: A Screenplay

Awe and exhilirationalong with heartbreak and mordant witabound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of/i>/i>

Overview

Awe and exhilirationalong with heartbreak and mordant witabound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on lovelove as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

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Editorial Reviews

Elizabeth Janeway

[Lolita's] illicit nature will both shock the reader into paying attention and prevent sentimentally false sympathy from distorting his judgment. Contrariwise, I believe, Mr. Nabokov is slyly exploiting the American emphasis on the attraction of youth and the importance devoted to the “teen-ager” in order to promote an unconscious identification with Humbert’s agonies. Both techniques are entirely valid. But neither, I hope, will obscure the purpose of the device: namely, to underline the essential, inefficient, painstaking and pain-giving selfishness of all passion, all greedof all urges, whatever they may be, that insist on being satisfied without regard to the effect their satisfaction has upon the outside world. Humbert is all of us.  NY Times Book Review Sunday, August 17, 1958

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What People are Saying About This

John Updike

Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written...that is, ecstatically.

Meet the Author

Readers of Vladimir Nabokov's novels might be slightly uncomfortable with them, were they not so awe-inspiring. Nabokov (1899-1977) had a penchant for writing about the tragic and the taboo in his books, especially the still-controversial Lolita. But his erudite, inventive approach to writing — buttressed by his formidable academic and cultural intellect — made him a literary legend.

Brief Biography

Date of Birth:

April 23, 1899

Date of Death:

July 2, 1977

Place of Birth:

St. Petersburg, Russia

Place of Death:

Montreux, Switzerland

Education:

Trinity College, Cambridge, 1922

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Lolita is absolutely my favorite book. It's a great story--the prose is sublime, whether you think it's a love story/"agree" with it or not. Nabokov is an incredibly skilled writer, and has a dark sense of humor that is seen frequently throughout the story. However, if you're bored by the prose, then you shouldn't even bother reading the book, because it's the style, not just the story, that makes this novel impeccable. I have read this book several times, and do not grow tired of it. It's dark, funny, and sad at once, and consistently beautiful.